


when a lovely flame dies

by gurli



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Angst, M/M, basically yifan leaves exo, because i am hashtag still not over it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 07:13:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3927646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gurli/pseuds/gurli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yifan stops smoking because he doesn't want to die too early. He starts smoking again because he really doesn't care that much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when a lovely flame dies

**Author's Note:**

> title from Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, preferably the Eartha Kitt version because that's my favorite.
> 
> this story is basically an overly pretentious way of being sad about the one year anniversary of the last OT12 stage and is based 100% on falsity and fable and my need for unrequited love stories to live vicariously through.

i.

 

 

The night Yifan quits smoking there is a moon above the Han river. It looks bloated, filled to the seams, distended with sunlight and he’s happy. 

 

 

ii.

 

After the first win with Wolf in the middle of June, Zitao kisses him on the cheek backstage and Yifan knows that the crush he’s been hiding for four years isn’t just a crush. When he wipes happy tears from Zitao’s eyes and everything goes quiet for a second, he knows he’s in so fucking deep he’s never going to get out. Because Zitao smiles at him with tears in his eyes and says ”Thanks, duizhang” and it feels like drowning and taking a first breath at the same time. Yifan is sure nobody is allowed to feel this happy. 

 

iii.

 

 

There’s a moon somewhere behind the thick smog of Beijing the night Yifan starts smoking again. He exhales the smoke through his teeth and can’t help but wondering if Zitao’s breath has been his nicotine for the past six years. Yifan realizes there’s something inherently very sad about being 24 years old and starting again. But he stands on his balcony in an apartment larger than the one he used to share with thirteen people and prays to whatever deities are left for him that the smoke will fill the empty spaces he can’t help seeing. 

 

iv.

 

His new manager is a chic man of 34 who has seven other clients.

”But you’re my favourite!” he says and winks as he keeps stirring his over-sugared coffee.

It’s a long way from the stern managers who would correct his korean with a warm smile, but this is home now.

”Of course I am,” Yifan scoffs instead ”I’m taller than the other seven combined.” 

 

v.

 

When Yifan is seven his name means consistently great. When Yifan is seventeen his name means mere mortal. When Yifan is seven he climbs the highest tree on the school yard and cries out in sheer joy. When Yifan is seventeen he climbs the stairs to the roof of the dingy apartment building in Seoul he’s been assigned to and cries.  

 

vi.

 

The thing is, Yifan is happy.He’s happy and he doesn’t feel like collapsing and he doesn’t dread the sound of his alarm bell or his phone ringing or his name called out. He’s happy he’s not awake until three in the morning learning a new choreography only to un-learn it three weeks later. He’s happy, but he’s not content. He’s happy but he aches and aches and no matter how many friends he makes or how drunk he gets or how many slim boys without last names bend over for him, the ache won’t go away. He sees Luhan at an event and he feels like breaking.

”I didn’t know you would be here.”

”Me neither.”

The fact that their managers would have prevented them both from attending if they had known goes unsaid. They sit on a bench outside the party, quietly, for two hours and the only reason Yifan gets up is that he’s out of cigarettes. When Luhan asks if he can spend the night at Yifan’s place he doesn’t say no because having one more body in his too-big apartment makes the sharpest edges of the ache disappear.

”Call me, okay?” Luhan says the next day because he knows Yifan won’t unless he tells him to. 

 

vii.

 

 _'did you know they discovered a 63rd moon of Jupiter in 2011?'_  

he texts the number he’s deleted but has had memorized for six years.

_'did you know on Venus a day is longer than a year?' 'did you know you can fit one million earths inside the sun'_

he texts.

_'did you know there are seven billion people on this earth and i still only want you'_

he doesn’t text, just types it out as he stares at the ” _read at 09:12 am_ ” blinking form underneath his last message and smokes an entire pack of menthol Camels.  

 

viii.

 

Yifan remembers the first time he saw Zitao fighting. He remembers stopping outside the practice room because he knew that the boy who insisted on sleeping with a night light was supposed to be a martial artist, but he doubted it. So he stood in the hallway watching the same boy who would stumble over korean syllables and laugh too loud twist into a kick in the middle of the air and then land almost without a sound. He remembers it because Zitao was feline grace and Yifan couldn’t breathe.

 

ix.

 

Yifan is pretty sure other people don’t feel things the way he does. He feels so much. It’s like he’s a ball of cotton and just the slightest puff of wind and he’s blown away. So at 13 he stops showing it, starts moulding his face into a mask and somehow at 22 and debuting he thinks of it as a victory every time somebody tells him ”you look so distant”. But then, at 24 he suddenly has no Chanyeol to laugh for him, no Jongdae to joke for him, no Junmyeon to hide behind and he stands alone on stage and forces every single thought away until he can laugh without it looking forced.  

 

x.

 

It’s selfish, Yifan knows, but every times he goes on twitter or weibo and sees a rumor about Zitao leaving, his heart flutters and his mind races.

He thinks it would go like this: Zitao calling him, crying, from the airport and Yifan picking him up in his Range Rover. Zitao curling up against his side once they’re at Yifan’s apartment and Zitao mumbling ”I did it for you. I couldn’t leave you even though you left me.” and Yifan mumbling ”I love you” because he never got to before and because Yifan watches dramas when he can’t sleep.

Instead it goes like this, every time: Zitao denies the rumors, Zitao assures everybody he’s never leaving, Zitao says together forever and we are one and the fans are so happy, so thankful. Zitao has always been selfless where Yifan is selfish.  

 

xi.

 

Sometimes Yifan goes days thinking only two things. He thinks about leaving, and he thinks about Zitao. For the longest time, the latter takes precedence. But then one day it doesn’t. Yifan feels hollow, like somebody replaced his bone marrow with helium and sooner or later he’ll float away. He is hollow and helium-filled and no matter how hard Zitao holds his hand, Yifan will float away like a stray balloon.  

 

xii.

 

For some reason Yixing texts him small updates on their lives. Yifan isn’t quite sure what he’s done to deserve a friend like Yixing, but he’s thankful. It’s not the official stuff, Yifan keeps up well enough, but the small things.

_'baekhyunnie has moved out of the dorm room and is sleeping in the living room it’s so weird he’s made like a fortress.'_  
_'hunhun just ate a piece of orange peel because jongdae said he wouldn’t'_  
_'zitao busted his ankle but they say he’ll be fine i’ll tell him not to put weight on it don’t worry. also baozi says hi.'_

They’re a bit like peeking into a life Yifan isn’t supposed to have and he feels guilty every time he reads them and doesn’t reply. He’s glad he gets them though, because they make the edges in his chest less sharp.  

 

xiii.

 

The first time Zitao gets drunk he ends up crying, curling into Yifan like he’s a small child and not 180 centimeters of underage drinking and home-sickness. When Yifan slurs out soothing but foreign syllables, Zitao replies in mandarin:

”Duizhang, please, can’t we just speak normally tonight.”

It’s been three months since Yifan heard Zitao speak mandarin last and he’s forgotten how soft it sounds, how much it sounds like home, how much it feels like being free when he replies in mandarin as well.  

 

xiv.

 

Yifan can’t forget Zitao not looking at him the day he left. Sometimes he dreams about it. Sometimes he looks at fan-taken pictures trying to find the boy who didn’t even say goodbye. Zitao goes for a drive with Sehun the day he leaves, and when they get back from the bubble tea shop the only sign there has ever been another member in Zitao’s room is the unmade bed and an empty photo frame that Yifan hadn’t been able to fit into his suit case. The last time Yifan actually sees Zitao he’s laughing at something Sehun says, laugh stopping immediately once he spots Yifan in the rear view mirror before he starts the Maserati. Zitao doesn’t return his texts, doesn’t like his posts, doesn’t call him, doesn’t mention him. Yifan thinks that if he pretends everything is fine for long enough, sooner or later it will be.

 

xv.

 

”Oh my god Yifan, you can’t lie around moping all day - get up.” It’s his manager, because nobody else would ever call him before noon.

”I am up.” Yifan replies and it’s a blatant lie because he’s still under the covers.

”You better be. You have to be at the salon by two - I mean the opening is at eight so you better get your ass moving. And please shave.”

”I was going to, I can’t pull of a beard even if I tried.”

”And I thank god for that every day, Yifan, now please get up. And eat breakfast.”

”Jesus christ, why are you mothering me?”

”It’s because you’re such a pleasant person to talk to.”

”Fuck you.”

Yifan hangs up and he doesn’t feel bad. He does eat breakfast though, although technically it’s lunch, and when he gets to the salon he’s all bows and smiles and everybody pretends not to notice that he reeks from the cigarettes he smoked through the rolled down window of the car. Life goes on and Yifan tries to let it.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> if you didn't HATE this find me on tumblr @zitaotrash


End file.
